Short notes and essays about stuff that interests me (mostly technical stuff).

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Europa Universalis trade operations

I suspect I've been handling trading completely wrong.

I'm playing as Castile, and getting a pitifully low income from my trading operations.

Among other mistakes, I think I'm:

Placing a merchant in the trade node where my capital resides (Sevilla). According to this webpage, that's wholly unnecessary and just wastes my merchant.

Placing a merchant in Bordeaux, which is indeed a trade node where I own provinces, but I've told my merchant to collect revenue, when instead he should be steering it.

Placing a merchant in trade nodes like Frankfurt, Antwerp, or Venice, which are indeed valuable nodes, but are regions where I have absolutely no presence whatsoever.

Next time I find some time to play the game, I really must try to learn more about how the trade functionality works, because I have this feeling I could be getting five times as much value out of my merchants and trade as I currently do.

There are lots of things I want to try out in the game, but for the time being I can't do much of anything, because I have absolutely no money at all, which I suspect is largely due to my ineptitude at trading.